Sufficient Grace for Friend

His grace is sufficient.

Walking Wounded: Over the last two weeks, I've watched many faithful team workers straining under sickness. Seasonal flu and cold and infections have been crudely ruthless. On any given day our team has been running on 80% of staff and many of them working sick. Some customers are understanding. Some are pressuring. Somehow, this amazing group has continued to perform for so many. It is amazing to watch and a joy to serve alongside them.

The Press: Pressing issues remind me of the sufficient empowerment of God to get the job done. Goals waiting to be met loom and ask for attention. There is sufficient empowerment and time. There is grace. A missed deadline is not the end of the opportunity.

Missed Appointment: Sure, some appointments are hard to get again. Some actions have deadlines that only come infrequently. Yet, they can be made up in different ways.

Utter Failure: Then there are utter failures. The deadline is gone and not coming back. The goal is missed and not reachable again in my lifetime. Grace apply's there also and a little mercy. There is enough forgiveness and strength in God to get back up and find a new goal to go forward. There is enough mercy to forgive myself and go again. Failure is an event not a person.

Prayer: What a wonderful Father You are. Cause the breath of Your most Holy Spirit to fill our hearts and minds. Cause the strength and endurance that carried Christ to the cross and beyond to well up inside of us. We have not yet resisted to the point of blood and giving our lives in complete sacrifice. Teach us to give our lives fully every day. Give us loving-kindness that helps us get up when we fail. Give us laughter to realize the temporary slips are just temporary. In testing moments, allow us to be fully encased in Your sufficiency.

Phil Larson 405-388-8037 Add:508 Tumbleweed Dr. Yukon, Ok 73099
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Laughing

Victims are inactive.
Survivors are reactive.
Dreamers are preactive.
Winners are proactive.   Dennis Waitley

Consider the position of communications and messaging in our world.  Facebook for me spans connections that include physicians, polititians, homemakers, ministers, students, teens, elderly, and business men and women.   There are community and industry and friend and family connections.  The same is true of my linkedin connections.  With little overlap, there are over 1000 people.  I have more connections than that.  My regular email postings go to over 3000.  Without these tools I would never be able to communicate with them.

Does that make me a LION or a celeb or just a friendly person?  Actually I am concerned about others.  I care to know more about you than your name and gender.  And that brings communication and connection.

Sometimes teen friends in Mexico use text babble in Spanish.  It is as hard to translate as English text babble.  I may not catch all the drift, but I grow and laugh.

Sometimes my marketing friends go into jargon that pushes me to read and research.  I grow and laugh.

Sometimes my preacher friends run on and on and on.  I grow and laugh.

Sometimes people assume we all believe as they do and take vitriolic digs at other people and other ideas.  I grow and I don't laugh.

There are jokes and shared beauties and exposed emotions and new realities and deep thoughts expressed in real time.  The front porch of my Mayberry spans the globe, cultures, generations, and languages.  I enjoy and I laugh.

I laugh in joy to be able to engage so many wonderful expressions of people living in this blessed world.

Laugh.

Sent from my Samsung smartphone on AT&T

Freedom for Friend

Psalm 126:4  Turn to freedom our captivity and restore our fortunes, O Lord

Life comes in bigs and littles.  Life comes in distractions and facilitations.  Life comes.

 

Somewhere in those moments we can lose freedom.  We can lose the fortune of prior gains.

 

My prayer for you this week is that you regain freedoms you may have lost along the path.  May you have restored gains that have slipped.

 

Father,  find a way this week for Friend to have restored freedom. 

Where a strength has been robbed, let it be restored.

Where a gain has been moved backward, allow progress to enter.

You are able.

You are willing.

Free.

Restore.

Bless.

 

 

Phil Larson 405-388-8037 Add: 508 Tumbleweed Dr. Yukon, Ok 73099
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A Prayer For A Great Valentine's Week, Friend.

To: Friend Friend      From: Phil

Re:  Love Rejoices When Right and Truth Prevail 

I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. That is why right, temporarily defeated, is stronger than evil triumphant.  Martin Luther King Jr.

"It (love) does not rejoice at injustice and unrighteousness, but rejoices when right and truth prevail. Love bears up under anything and everything that comes, is ever ready to believe the best of every person, its hopes are fadeless under all circumstances, and it endures everything [without weakening]." 1 Corinthians 13: 6-7 AMP

 

Love is an amazing game changer.  Love of country allows completely disparate philosophies to find common ground.  Love of family enables couples to stay together under amazing stress.  Love of neighbor overlooks bad behavior and moves on.

 

Love rejoices when right and truth prevail.  That is an amazing statement.  Love keeps us in the game when every other pressure seeks to put us out.

 

Prayer:

Father, this week, our world celebrates the life of Valentine, lover of people.  Help us to celebrate the strength of love.  Enable us to see the good in each person, friend and foe.  Enable us to point it out and encourage right and truth.  Enable my friend, Friend, in love and action that leads to right and truth.  Let love rejoice this week in our world, our sphere of influence, our decisions, our actions.

 

Phil Larson 405-388-8037 Add:508 Tumbleweed Dr. Yukon, Ok 73099
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Prayer for Enablers for Friend.

1 Peter 1:2b May grace (spiritual blessing) and peace be given you in increasing abundance [that spiritual peace to be [a]realized in and through Christ, [b]freedom from fears, agitating passions, and moral conflicts]. Amplified

Deepest Fears:  Some days our deepest fears, agitations, and conflicts rise. Held down in most circumstances by self control and mental toughness, they slip through the guard. At those times, we are most susceptible to unexplainable diversions from normal form. Those are scary moments.

Enablers:  Grace and peace have the enormous energy to carry us over the top of our normal self. Friend, I pray you have all the grace and peace you need this week to be bigger than you are in the toughest moments.

Prayer: Father, give Friend grace and peace in abundance. When deepest fears want to rise, guard heart and mind with a peace that is beyond understanding. When agitating passions erupt, let calm endurance prevail. As conflicts clutter thinking, blow the warmth of Your Holy Spirit's wisdom through cobwebs of concern. Grace and peace, Father, for Friend.

Phil Larson 405-388-8037   http://prayermetro.wordpress.com

508 Tumbleweed Dr. Yukon, Ok 73099
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Flat Out Fun.... a devotion from Phil at PrayerMetro

To: Friend Friend From: Phil at PrayerMetro

Subject:  Flat Out Fun 

 

Exodus 23:5 If you see the donkey (car,truck) of one who hates you lying [helpless] under his load,(dead or with a flat) you shall refrain from leaving the man to cope with it alone; you shall help him to release the animal.(fix it and get down the road)

 

Flat Out Fun : After spending a few hours in a public facility, I returned to find a flat on my truck.  Ram pickups are big trucks.  That wheel looked imposing.  My casual business dress felt restricting.  Really glad I did not put on that white shirt this morning.

Immediately I set to work.  Rain was coming.  Lightening was threatening.  Finally I figured all the needs out, dropped the spare, jacked the truck, changed the tire, put everything back and climbed in to drive home.  The rain spit on me as I replaced the jack under the seat.  Whew!  I laughed and thanked God for muscles for the moment.

All the while, people were coming to their cars, beeping to unlock, and driving past me on the ground under the truck, by the wheel, lifting the big ol tire, and doing the deed.  Where was that great security crew I saw driving around all this time?  No one asked to help or even offered an encouraging word.  Many passed and looked the other way.

There must be a way to make time for others.  I’m sure every person felt I had the situation under control.  Between me and Jesus, we did.

I laughed and had a good time and thanked God the rain held off and I was able to do what needed done.  Honestly, it was fun.

 

Quizzical

That verse in Exodus used to be common practice in our nation.  I grew up picking up hitchhikers and changing tires on the side of the road for others.  In our age of cell phones and hurry-up, we seem to have lost time for others.  I am just as guilty as any.  The moral center of our nation is skewed a different direction.  I don't have a solution, but I certainly see the issue.  Somehow, we need to get back to some easy to understand scriptural guidelines of civil responsibility and common neighborliness.  What an opportunity for the Christians in our nation to show the effect of reading that book with effective behaviors.

 

Prayer:

Father, we could sure use some help in our courage and consideration of others.  What has entered our cultural soul that enables us to walk by friend and fellow citizen and not offer our time and selves?  What has happened to so busy us that we leave others to fend for themselves.  Father, we need your intervention.  Our view has been skewed.  Our understanding has been shifted to self and hurry. Father, I am guilty.  I have passed others on the road and not offered help.  Cure our hearts.  Bring us to a simple living of simple scriptural principles.

Phil Larson 405-388-8037 Add:508 Tumbleweed Dr. Yukon, Ok 73099
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Contented Days for Friend.

"Never be discouraged if you don't do too well - or over elated when you make a good play. Simply do the best you have in you again on the next down." Bud Wilkinson writing to his son, Jay. In the same letter.... "Character, kindness, and thoughtfulness toward other people, and an unselfish attitude of service to others are the qualities which make a man." in the book Dear Jay, Love Dad.

Matthew 6:34 So do not worry or be anxious about tomorrow or the next decision or the next moment, for tomorrow and the next moment will have worries and anxieties of their own. Sufficient for each day and moment is its own trouble.

An element of success is the ability to be in the moment, focused on the moment, and not overly concerned about what cannot be controlled. Giving our best to the moment and decision and day brings good results over time and great results in our character.

Father, let Friend see success in the moments.

Let me see success in my moments.

Allow Friend to find contentment in giving the best to the decisions and days met this week.

Open a window of refreshing enjoyment of the journey this week for us.

Bless and do not hold back, Father.

You are good to all and Your tender, loving kindness covers all Your works. 

Phil Larson 405-388-8037 508 Tumbleweed Dr. Yukon, Ok 73099
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Blog: http://prayermetrodevotion.blogspot.com
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